Betsy Carroll, Author at Leading Virtually

The Implications of Cloud Computing for Business Leaders and Teams

Betsy Carroll — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:47:53 +0000

It’s both good and bad that I can’t take my work home. These days my biggest limitation is technology. The work I do depends heavily on several expensive software packages. My employer has a policy disallowing the organization from paying for software for home computers, and these applications are too expensive for me to buy on my own dime. So often I’m unable to work from the comfort of my home or after work hours even when I’m inclined to do so.

Recently in my field there has been a lot of talk about cloud computing, a possible solution to my dilemma. Cloud computing is the increasingly common occurrence of accessing computing applications via the Internet. Cloud computing separates the software from the logical functions of the local hardware, so instead of needing computing power or specific applications locally (e.g. a specific desktop running a particular application in your office), major computing functions are housed on a server that people access from afar, usually via the Internet. Computing power and the requisite software are purchased or used as needed.

What are some examples of cloud computing? A good example is Google Docs, which allows the Leading Virtually team to store documents and collaborate entirely online and at the team’s convenience from any computer with Internet access and no use of our own storage capacity. The National Center for Education Statistics now allows users to perform basic statistical functions (e.g., regression analysis) on the website where users retrieve the data. MagCloud, a service from HP, offers all the computing necessary for magazine production as a utility available on the web (see a multimedia presentation from NY Times about this).

One of the big selling points for cloud computing is that it significantly reduces (if not removes) the capital investment companies have to make in the applications of interest. Rather than having to buy a system or a software, cloud computing offers a new model. A company might pay an access fee or membership, rather than buying entire systems. The promise is that many people and organizations will have access to important business technology that they might not have been able to afford before cloud computing.

While that business model is interesting, and many details of its sustainability are still in question, the interesting side to the Leading Virtually team is what this means for work teams and leaders. As cloud computing gains popularity, capital resources are less of a concern or barrier for teams to access technology. This means that the way people can use technology to enable their knowledge, ideas, and creativity will be even more crucial than it is now. Cloud computing, by democratizing computing, will take us one step further into being an economy in which your knowledge and talents, rather than access to technology, give you an edge. Who might this affect?

IT leaders will spend less time focusing on managing capital investments and more time focusing on effective and efficient use of technology
IT support will not need to focus as much on troubleshooting hardware, and can invest more in training people in the organization to take full advantage of applications.
Using technology to try out new ideas will be less risky – even if the idea fails, there will be little sunk capital costs.
Even physical space and interaction might change. For example, I am currently chained to my computer, so to speak, because of specific applications I use regularly. But I work with people throughout the organization. If my applications were accessed through cloud computing, I could work in many physical spaces other than my office. This could enhance our ability to collaborate both face-to-face (by accessing work together on a computer in one office) and virtually.
Virtual teams may be formed more often and in more organizations because cloud computing will give teams the tools they need to collaborate effectively and at a reduced cost to the organization.

Workers may see an increase in flexibility of work hours and opportunities for remote work.

A potential drawback is that cloud computing may continue to blur the distinction between work and non-work time which began with communication technologies like email and work cell phones. As workers became “reachable” all the time, expectations to work outside of regular work hours have increased. Cloud computing could increase this effect. Where previously I could only perform certain work functions at my office computer, cloud computing might make it possible for me to perform those functions from home, or vacation, or anywhere. This means that leaders must also be responsible and carefully consider what they expect of their work teams. Just because work can be accessed and done doesn’t mean that every hour of the day is fair game for work. People need and often value their down time.

It seems quite likely that cloud computing is going to become more widespread, and that it will be a form of disruptive technology – uprooting old ways of doing things for new. Disruptive technology tends to breathe new life into some people and businesses while making others obsolete. IT leaders and workers alike should take note of cloud computing, and start thinking of how it can open up new possibilities for the work they do.

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The Leading Virtually Digest, March 20, 2009

Betsy Carroll — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:44:47 +0000

What: NYTimes article about Cisco’s showcasing its TelePresence system.
Posts to which it is related: Supportive and Critical Communication in Virtual Teams, Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology
Bottom line: This article reviews the use of Cisco’s TelePresence system during a press conference at which the company announced new servers. According to the author (Ashlee Vance), the press conference was too long, felt unnatural and scripted, and failed to deliver on its promise of a feeling of presence via this teleconferencing system. So should we give up on this kind of system, or on achieving a natural feeling of presence during teleconferencing? No. The system is only technology, and human beings still need to make good decisions to use that technology effectively. This is precisely why a new kind of leadership – virtual leadership – is necessary for teams and companies who want to adopt collaborative technologies. Systems like TelePresence don’t do away with the need for a savvy team leader any more than fax machines substituted for leadership.

What: NYTimes article about the uses of Twitter.
Posts to which it is related: What President Obama Teaches Us For Leading Virtually, Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology, Freeing Yourself from Email
Bottom line: This is a great little article whose main point is that there are a lot of ways Twitter can be used, and you should use it for whatever works for you. I think that when new forms of collaborative technology are presented to the public, and many of them are complex, lots of us have a tendency to shy away thinking we can’t master or understand it. So this reminder is very valuable – remember that collaborative technology is only a tool. Individuals must assess the features, figure out some of the possibilities, and ultimately determine how those possibilities solve your problems or fill a need you have. Try something new today, whether it’s joining Twitter or blogging or creating an avatar in a virtual world. See what you can harvest from these technologies that helps you achieve a social goal!

What: NYTimes article about a Google project to bring Internet access to areas that previously had none.
Posts to which it is related: None
Bottom line: There’s something about the concept of bringing technology to remote areas in Africa that makes me cringe a little because the presentation can get condescending pretty quickly. Still, this project represents a really interesting social experiment. We have talked before in our blog about the fact that virtual and collaborative technologies have incredible potential for rethinking collaboration, but that it will take time before people can come up with truly innovative ways of using those technologies. The primary stumbling block is that we have so many assumptions about the technologies, it’s hard to conceptualize new uses. For example, we seem to have trouble using virtual worlds for anything other than meetings or classes that reflect those events in the “real” world. So when Google brings Internet access to people who have had hardly any modern technology (no phones, no computers, etc), they are moving the Internet into a group of people without any of the “baggage” of assumptions that more experienced technology users have. The Africans in the village in this article are just as clever and adaptive as we are, but without all that we take for granted about technology. I imagine once they find their way around the computer and the Internet, they could have some really ground-breaking ideas for how to use them. In the work-obsessed parts of the world, meetings are ritual; we have duplicated those “rituals” without much innovation in virtual worlds. What parts of human ritual will transfer to virtual worlds from people in a place where they don’t spend most of their time at work in an office?

The other important part of this social experiment is that we might have as much to learn from a remote African village as they do from the “western world”. These technologies were meant to help us save time and be more efficient, yet many of us find ourselves weighed down by them (think of the crush of daily emails many people complain about). Perhaps there is a lot about a non-technological life that we can learn from, just as much as African villagers can learn when they gain Internet access.

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Demarginalizing Multiple Identities

Betsy Carroll — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:59 +0000

I have several email addresses, and I use them each for different purposes. I never receive personal emails on my work account. The account that came with my Internet at home has been sacrificed to spam since I use that account for every website registration. I keep an old email address that’s hardly used just in case someone I haven’t spoken to in 10 years contacts me. So I understand that for different roles I play, I have different email addresses.

This week I came across an advertisement that goes one step further – it suggests that a person should have an email address that their Second Life avatar can take with them into Real Life. LindenPost.com is now offering email accounts that are tailored to people’s double identities in the “real” world and Second Life.

This is compelling because the language of the LindenPost ad is a departure from most of what we read about Second Life. News bites about Second Life tend to sound amused by the popularity of the virtual world, or slightly condescending about the idea of spending significant time in a virtual world with an alternate identity. But avid Second Life users seem to understand that the virtual world gives people the opportunity to express facets of who they are (or would like to be) in a new context. Many Second Life users are not just tinkering around – they are expressing one of their identities. Whether that identity is very similar or very different from their “real” world identity matters very little – an Second Life identity is a valid part of the whole picture of a person.

In a previous post, I talked about managing multiple identities at work. In that post, I had in mind more disparate versions of identities, perhaps those that are forced by the tasks and roles a person has at work and home. The LindenPost ad suggests something more – that it might be good business to respect the voluntary exploration of multiple identities. As more companies, especially non-gaming companies, take avatars seriously, the exploration of multiple identities will become less marginalized.

Why does this matter? I’m not only thinking of the necessity of being respectful of other people’s identities (though I do think that’s important). This may also be crucial to finding new ways of using virtual worlds. Current uses of virtual worlds are fairly limited by what we take for granted in the real world. As Becky recently discussed in a post, we will have to break down assumptions about the real world before fully taking full advantage of what virtual worlds have to offer. Some experts believe the US is losing its competitive advantage of creativity and innovation. If we want to stay competitive in the world, we need to break down old assumptions and find new uses for old and new technologies. For instance, people are beginning to accept that playing video games is not just nonsense, but can teach skills that are useful and desirable in other contexts (see our post on gaming and leadership skills).

This may be quite a conclusion from just the wording of the LindenPost website. But words signal attitudes, and attitudes can influence behaviors. These bigger issues are part of what we have to consider about new technologies such as virtual worlds. And if we want to find truly ground-breaking uses for the new technology of virtual worlds and virtual collaboration, perhaps we have to overcome our underlying assumptions about multiple identities.

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The Leading Virtually Digest, February 14, 2009

Betsy Carroll — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 06:00:25 +0000

What: Story on NPR about the use of video conferencing in immigration courts.
Posts to which it is related: Supportive and Critical Communication in Virtual Teams, Lessons from Victorian Technology
Bottom line: This piece demonstrates some of the issues that arise when a form of virtual collaboration is used strictly for efficiency with no adjustments made for interacting virtually instead of face-to-face. Immigration courts are struggling, like many other organizations, to control costs. They have recently increased their use of conference calling for court proceedings – people on trial are conferenced in. Their lawyers often choose to be in the court with the judge, though they may choose to be with their client instead. Because it’s immigration court, translators are often needed as well. The NPR piece reports that translators are commonly teleconferenced into a phone on the judge’s desk. Imagine the logistics of communicating with that set up! And imagine an “efficient” trial with those logistics when a person is trying to plead their case for asylum. We know that it takes extra effort to make the human connection when conferencing. Immigration lawyers are concerned that the increased use of video- and tele-conferencing is creating an obstacle to proper legal proceedings.

What: A VentureBeat piece about the TimeBridge conference call system with improved features.
Posts to which it is related: Wonderland: A Tool for Online Collaboration
Bottom line: Maybe what the immigration courts need is a system that works better logistically. Certainly that would be a step in the right direction. TimeBridge has the right idea – their product includes not only conferencing capabilities, but two other features to simplify virtual collaboration. Each person’s availability is now available to others. This is intended to make the scheduling process simpler. This VentureBeat piece seems to be singing its praises. And it seems likely that as the logistics of virtual collaboration are made simpler, there is more room for that extra effort to go to creating social connections in this communication medium.

What: Science Daily article about the difference between conferencing and face-to-face discussion.
Posts to which it is related: Spread YourVirtual Smile, Really
Bottom line: In this post, that references a Management Science article, we learn that videoconferencing appears to have an effect on communication. According to the study, people are more likely to base decisions on how much they like the other person in videoconferencing; this is in contrast to face-to-face interactions, where decisions tend to be based more on facts or information. The study was conducted in a medical setting, but it seems likely that this effect would hold in similar decision making situations. For example, this has implications for the use of videoconferencing in immigration courts, as described above.

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Managing the Multiple Identities of Virtual Work

Betsy Carroll — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:53:56 +0000

Recently, warfare expert P. W. Singer appeared on several shows (NPR’s Fresh Air, The Daily Show) to talk about his new book Wired for War. While not necessarily the central focus of the book, one point he made caught my attention for its relation to virtual teams. Singer talked about a drone pilot who engages in war, but from afar – drone pilots are often halfway around the world from the battle zones in which they fight. Singer recalls one pilot who spoke of how psychologically confusing it is to be at war in Iraq (virtually) all day, and then to get in his car and within an hour be sitting at the dinner table with his family.

Thinking about this experience, I realized that virtual collaboration and virtual work has created a new kind of work-life challenge. Being immersed in one context (or several) during the work day, then in a drastically different context at the end of the work day might have a strong impact on workers. Academics have started to consider the effects of the emotional labor involved in many virtual situations, but virtual collaboration technology is new enough that we have had little time to explore the psychological and emotional effects of moving between contexts and identitites within a work day. These multiple identities are not totally different from the roles that are considered in work-life balance issues. Perhaps we can adapt understanding from that area to begin managing the multiple identities of virtual workers.

In this post I will discuss:

The challenge that exists when workers have multiple identities.
Three ways that multiple identities can lead to beneficial outcomes.
Some ideas for how managers can influence those beneficial outcomes.

The challenge of multiple identities

We know that people who work in a virtual context often develop a strong identity within that context. In fact, organizations encourage meaningful identity in order to strengthen commitment and productivity. While this seems harmless enough, we have failed to recognize that moving from one context and identity to another may take a toll on employees.

Take, for example, employees of Indian call centers who are asked to adopt a completely different identity at work in order to “fit in” with the mostly American customers they help by phone. These workers are trained to adopt an American-sounding accent, and learn to speak in the pace and cadence of American English. In addition, many workers find it necessary to know something about US current events in order to make convincing small talk with customers. They are even asked to adopt an alias – an American-sounding name – to use when customers phone. Between the effort put in for speech training and the adoption of an alias, the result is that many of these call center employees have a work identity that is not the same as their non-work identity (see abstract, full research paper on this issue).

I believe that, in the era of virtual work, multiple identities will become the modern analog of people playing multiple roles in their lives. The idea of balancing multiple roles gained attention in the US as women entered the workforce in large numbers. This phenomenon meant that home roles and work roles were no longer neatly divided up between a husband and a wife. Today, most American workers have roles both at home and at work. Technology is creating the next wave of this phenomenon, in which many virtual workers have not only several roles, but even several identities between home and work.

Finding harmony among multiple identities

How then can we manage multiple identities? Perhaps research previously applied to multiple roles can help. In recent years, the work-life research perspective has shifted. Previously, models assumed that work and personal life were necessarily at odds with one another. Because of this, suggestions for dealing with multiple roles had to do with trying to balance work and personal life.

More recently, with the positive organizational behavior movement, this thinking has shifted. Models of multiple roles no longer assume that work and home are “enemies”. The focus is now on integrating work life and personal life, in the sense of accepting that both are parts of the individual. Newer evidence shows that this “role accumulation” can have positive outcomes, rather than necessarily causing stress. In a 2006 Academy of Management Review article*, Greenhaus and Powell outline three ways this can occur. We can apply their explanation to multiple identities as well.

1. Additive effects on well-being

First, the authors cite evidence that when people are satisfied with their home and work roles, the positive effects on their well-being are compounded. Applied to identities, this would mean that workers who have a work identity (or multiple work identities) and a home identity might be happy and productive if they are satisfied with those identities.

Achieving satisfaction with multiple identities is probably idiosyncratic for each of us, but there are ways that managers can help team members achieve satisfaction with multiple identities. For example, in a previous post, Becky points out that allowing people autonomy (such as choosing their avatar’s appearance) in virtual identities can go a long way toward satisfaction. In another post, Surinder points out that removing ambiguity and instilling a sense of ownership create team identity in virtual teams, which helps the team function more effectively. This should also have a positive domino effect on a team member’s individual identity related to the virtual world. Team leaders have the opportunity to positively impact a team member’s work identity to bolster overall satisfaction.

2. Diversification for hard times

The second effect is a lot like diversifying your portfolio – the authors say that playing multiple roles can be useful when one’s role is especially stressful or difficult temporarily. In other words, if a person has just work, and work becomes very stressful, his whole world is stressful. But if he had work and several outside activities and close ties to family members, when work becomes stressful there are still aspects of life that feel calm and stable. This seems applicable to multiple identities as well – when one work identity becomes temporarily stressful, perhaps having other identities can lessen the impact. In this way, having multiple identities is a blessing during hard times.

This effect provides another tool for leaders to help team members with multiple identities. Without prying, stay in touch with how your team members are doing. Show interest not only in the work context and identity that you share with them, but also feel out how they are faring in their other contexts. When team members struggle in one context, do what you can to support them in your team’s context. This is where building social relationships can help.

3. Positive spillover

The third effect the authors discuss is a sort of positive spill from one role to another. They explain that social capital, and even social skills, generated by one role can be invested in other roles. For example, learning patience as a parent can make a person more patient with a difficult co-worker. Without the parental role this patience at work might never have been developed. As long as a person’s multiple identities are integrated (not feeling forced), it seems likely that this effect could occur for identities as well as for roles.

This is another area where leaders can make a difference. For example, you might periodically remind team members of the skills they have learned or enhanced as a result of your team project. Explore with team members whether aspects of those skills (such as problem solving) are useful to them in other aspects of life. Similarly, you might explore skills your team members use in other contexts that they haven’t yet utilized in your team’s context.

Conclusion

We don’t know much about the impact of multiple identities on workers. Virtual collaboration technology has created a whole new set of possibilities. We know that virtual team members are increasingly experiencing not only various roles, but various identities, and the effects of this new phenomenon need to be studied.

I believe that previous work in multiple roles and work-life integration provide a model for dealing with multiple identities in the virtual age. I also believe this model demonstrates that if employers and employees take a positive approach to integrating multiple identities, there is potential for very positive outcomes.

*Footnote: Sometimes the academic journal articles we cite are hard to find without a membership to the association or to a college/university library. Academy of Management Review is one of those. If you have access through a library, I recommend searching for the article on scholar.google.com.

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The Leading Virtually Digest, January 24, 2009

Betsy Carroll — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:54:01 +0000

What: CNN.com numbers about how people connected to the inauguration of President Obama.
Posts to which it is related: What President Obama Teaches Us for Leading Virtually
Bottom line: The numbers are staggering, and that’s a good sign by my reckoning. There are two things that I took away from this article. First, not only are massive number of people all over the world taking an interest (and an optimistic outlook) in Obama’s presidency, but they are also using newer technologies to stay connected. Considering these numbers, it probably is crucial that President Obama is showing signs of being a connected President. He changed the way campaigns are being run by effectively using technologies that connect people, and I’m hopeful he will do the same to conduct his Presidential work. If his mantra is that we are all responsible for the work that the United States needs to do, it’s important that we can connect and collaborate. This represents an important change from a hierarchical and need-to-know approach to government, moving towards a system that is flatter and more like a grassroots movement (like community organizing??). All the lessons of a virtual team apply to this new form of governance. The second thing I took away from this article is our ability to quickly learn about what people are up to or what is happening to them by looking up Internet statistics (see Google Flu Trends as a related example). This can be an extremely important source of information for a leader who wants to keep her/his finger on the pulse of those being led from a distance.

What: LA Times opinion piece by John Podesta about WHY President Obama wants to keep his Blackberry.
Post to which it is related: Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology
Bottom line: Podesta was a co-chair of Obama’s transition team, and he points out how important it is for Obama to keep in touch not only with his inner circle, but also with old friends and colleagues, or even the average American. In organizational behavior, there is a theory that says leaders have an in-group and an out-group, and that relationships between leader and team member are much richer for the in-group than for the out-group. In theory, outcomes for the in-group are better too, probably because they are given more resources (attention, time, guidance) from the leader. It seems like an important message from one of Obama’s top transition team members to say that the new President is keeping his Blackberry – he is using technology to expand his in-group and keep it as inclusive as possible. That should be good not only for the well-being of Americans, but also for the tasks that the President and his staff work on.

What: NYTimes short piece on President Obama getting to keep his Blackberry.
Post to which it is related: Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology
Bottom line: This piece focuses a bit more on what created an issue around this Blackberry, and this raises a good point. The new President wanted to keep this technology because he is accustomed to it and finds it an effective way to stay in touch with important advisors or contacts, but also to get information as quickly as possible. Those who opposed his use of a Blackberry apparently did so because of security reasons. Of interest to virtual team leaders is the issue of a paper trail. This short article mentions that the US President’s correspondences become part of an official record, which can be reviewed in case of problems. Perhaps this is also an issue for virtual teams – the flexible technologies that connect people and enable collaboration make it difficult to keep a record. I believe this is why many companies block the use of IM or chatting windows at their companies – if there is anything at stake, it may be necessary to keep a record of decisions and conversations. Keep this in mind when planning your team’s use of technology – leaders must consider not only the way technology connects people, but also what kind of paper trail or record might be necessary.

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Lessons From Victorian Technology

Betsy Carroll — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:40:18 +0000

The Leading Virtually team regards virtual collaboration technology as a new wave of options for human interaction. Much like the advent of the Internet changed the way we communicate and interact, our growing ability to connect in virtual worlds has a similar potential to drive social change. In our modern world it’s easy to forget that at other times in human history new technologies also made great changes in people’s work lives and everyday lives.

I was reminded of this over the weekend when I read a book called The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. The book documents the development of the telegraph (and several companion technologies), and the effects it had on human interaction. I was astounded by the parallels and similarities to the more recent effects of the Internet, and it seems likely there will be parallels with newer virtual collaboration technology, as it develops further. I was amazed by the examples that Standage gave of abbreviations telegraph operators used; they were so similar to the contemporary texting language (like “lol” and “imho”). I was touched by the Victorian-era predictions that the faster communication of the telegraph would bring nations together, much like what our modern day optimists predict of virtual collaboration technology. I had never given this much thought to what it was like for people when the telegraph began to spread as a communication medium. I realized that technological breakthroughs seem to consistently have a major effect on human beings, whatever the year.

This made me think that perhaps virtual team members and leaders can learn something from what our Victorian predecessors experienced as the telegraph changed their range of possibilities. Read on for five lessons we can learn from the Victorian experience of the telegraph as a new communication medium.

1. Planning is crucial when adopting technology.

The development of a telegraph system was plagued by amateur scientists who were put in charge of major events such as designing and laying cable across the Atlantic to connect the US and Europe. The men put in charge of this project underestimated a number of key variables, resulting in considerable rework. This represents a waste of resources that can be avoided with prudent planning. So too for virtual collaboration – managers should take the time to investigate their team’s options thoroughly and exercise that ounce of prevention before investing in or installing new technologies.

2. Keep in mind the distance between early adopters of technology and average users.

The telegraph represented a huge improvement in communication, yet the general public was slow to recognize its potential influence on society. Even governments were slow to recognize the benefits of an improved communication system. This seems to be the way with most technologies – there are dreamers pushing the limits of the technology, early adopters who are willing to try technologies right away, and far behind them are the majority of people who aren’t necessarily excited about major change. Managers may want to benefit from the knowledge and skills of people who aren’t natural early adopters. But as my colleague Angelo points out in a previous post, casual users or later adopters might be behind early adopters not only in technical acumen, but also in crucial areas like awareness of best practices for the technology.

3. Make sure your technology continues to support your purpose.

With the telegraph, there came a stage where some lines or offices were so busy that messages weren’t getting from place to place in a timely manner, yet that was the whole purpose of the technology. Similarly, virtual collaboration technology must be implemented and managed in a way that makes team productivity possible, rather than hindering it. Technology (and use of technology) that starts out being a helpful tool for a team might later become a hindrance. For example, your team might initially depend on a wiki for collaboration in early stages, but later find that the wiki has grown unwieldy and hard to navigate through. These kinds of problems are easily noticed if there is a strategic planning or assessment process throughout the lifespan of the technology, not just for initial implementation. We also advocate the regular use of After Action Reviews to help catch such problems.

4. Remember to consider companion technologies.

The story of the telegraph is incomplete without also discussing the rise of pneumatic tube systems around major cities. Initially these tube systems were developed to relieve the busiest parts of the telegraph lines that were causing bottlenecks. Likewise, there are a number of technologies available to virtual teams, and each should be considered for its contribution to the work at hand. Consider carefully the purpose of each so your choices support one another rather than confusing or competing. For example, see our earlier post about the importance of using email judiciously, whereby some communications are better by email while others are more effective by phone or another communication medium.

5. Don’t lose sight of the people for the technology.

One eyewitness account of the telegraph said that the telegraph cables crossing the Atlantic were not just cable, but represented bonds between people. The most interesting parts of the book were about the social change brought about by the telegraph system. Doubtless, it is crucial to plan the hardware and software logistics, but always keep in mind that they support the human bonds, and not the other way around.

Conclusion

I would highly recommend that managers or even members of virtual teams read The Victorian Internet. The rise of the Victorian communication system has so much in common with the changes we are currently experiencing in human communication. There’s a tendency in our culture to focus on the future, and an emphasis on how different a time we live in. But from a social perspective, communication technologies get fancier and fancier while human beings are still much the same. This book serves as a great reminder of the social issues any manager faces when dealing with new communication technology.

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The Leading Virtually Digest, January 9, 2009

Betsy Carroll — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:58:53 +0000

What: NYTimes article about Microsoft’s research in emerging markets
Post to which it is related: Leading Virtual Communities: Do We Have the Answers?
Bottom line: This article talks about some of the projects Microsoft teams are working on in emerging markets such as India. I love the idea of applying technology in creative ways to help social problems in countries that don’t have many of the luxuries we have here. For example, one team is using technology in creative ways to disseminate information about increasing milk production to dairy farmers in India. I’m particularly intrigued by one idea they talk about – one project allows people to submit data to a central computer by using their cellphone. In places where cell service is available, but computers and Internet connections are scarce, this is a clever way of creating a virtual community and gathering information from a dispersed group of people. I’ve read before that in many developing nations cell phone service has become available even where regular phone lines haven’t been installed. This makes for a whole different understanding of virtual collaboration and community in other parts of the world.

What: NYTimes article about a new system allowing patients to have a virtual appointment with doctors.
Post to which it’s related: Leading in Face-to-Face Versus Virtual Teams.
Bottom line: There seems to be a theme emerging here, as this is another great use of technology to help underserved populations. The service allows people to meet with a physician using an Internet connection and webcam. The patient and doctor both use webcams, so they see each other, and they talk online. While this may not become a replacement for office visits for the general population, it offers those without insurance a great alternative to either not getting care or ending up in the emergency room. The article discusses that the system tries to maintain continuity of care. Patients can see the same doctor again if they are available online. But if a patient has to see a different doctor, a copy of the report is forwarded to the doctor they usually see. I wonder whether some of our previous work about leading virtual versus face-to-face teams might apply to the doctor-patient relationship. At a time when we as a nation are faced with a health care crisis (and an incoming administration dedicated to doing something about that crisis) this application of collaborative technology might make reform possible.

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Deconstructing the Paradoxes of Virtual Team Leadership

Betsy Carroll — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:30:33 +0000

I recently read an article by Line Dube and Daniel Robey entitled “Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork”. The authors, through their research, determined five paradoxes that are prevalent in the realm of virtual teamwork. They then made some suggestions for dealing with each paradox.

In the rest of this post I will:

List the authors’ five paradoxes and their suggested solutions for each;
Explore some issues underlying each of the paradoxes for virtual team leaders.

Dube and Robey found, through extensive interviews with virtual team leaders and members, that there are 5 pervasive paradoxes of virtual teamwork. They also crafted solutions to help team leaders deal with these paradoxes. Here is a list.

1) Virtual teams require physical presence.

This is perhaps not as paradoxical as it might seem. We are discovering that new technologies are making it possible not only to stay in contact with those who are far away, but also to stay close to them. The feeling of presence by virtual teams only seems to be a paradox because we are still breaking away from the set of assumptions we had based on older technologies (letter writing, phone calls, etc). (For more, see our previous posts on ambient awareness and perceived proximity) The biggest obstacle to presence when team members are distant is the mindset that it can’t happen.

The authors recommend four things to help dispersed virtual teams feel physically present:

Hold a mandatory face-to-face kickoff meeting.
Match media with task requirements.
Maintain a rhythm using collaborative technologies and/or face-to-face meetings.
Learn to develop relationships using information and communication technologies.

2) The flexibility of virtual teamwork is aided by structure.

This also is not necessarily that paradoxical. A team project is immensely complex – think about how many decisions, actions, calculations, etc happen during the course of a project. No leader can give structure to the point of telling team members what to do for every single action. So in a way, wherever the structure leaves off, there is flexibility in how a team member acts. This means that a virtual team leader strives to find a balance between the flexibility and structure in their team project. This is also the case in co-located project teams, but we are less accustomed to doing business as dispersed project teams so it seems more notable. I believe that good judgment in finding balance between structure and flexibility comes from experience. Virtual team leaders with experience finding balance will find they only have to adapt their judgment somewhat to the new virtual context.

The authors of the article recommend four things to solve the paradox of flexibility versus structure:

Define clear objectives and prepare detailed plans, but maintain flexibility.
Maintain a shared team calendar using info and communication technologies.
Standardize communication and documentation processes, but leave open the possibility of adapting them.
Select team members carefully.

3) Interdependent work in virtual teams is accomplished by members’ independent contributions.

Here, I think the authors are talking about a paradox caused by logistical difficulties. People often employ virtual teams to achieve synergy – to get more from the team as a whole than the sum of the parts. And yet, our authors remind us that most teams struggle with the logistics of interdependent work. Their research indicates that many virtual teams deal with this by assigning work in the least interdependent way possible. Team leaders should remember that experience in virtual teamwork, especially the efficient use of technology, will improve the team’s ability to work interdependently. In the meantime, there may be creative strategies to find a happy medium. For example, it might be much easier for a sub-group of the team to work interdependently than for the whole team to do so. But the goal should be to reach a point where the virtual team can work interdependently with efficient and synergistic results.

The authors suggest three things that might help solve this paradox:

Hold face-to-face meetings for critical tasks.
Use information and communication technologies to get all members’ input.
Establish a collaborative culture.

4) Task-oriented virtual teamwork succeeds through social interaction.

The authors point out that virtual teams have a tendency to focus more on task than relationships during a project. It might be natural for the work itself to be more on the minds of team members, or to seem like the crucial thing to commit resources to. However, we know from years of research in teamwork that social aspects of the team can also greatly influence how well or how efficiently a team project is completed. Perhaps the social interaction happens with less effort in face-to-face teams; this means that virtual team leaders must remember the social interaction of members needs attention too in a virtual team project. Although it may seem counter-intuitive to very task-oriented individuals, social interaction and task completion both contribute to successful team projects.

The authors recommend two things that can help virtual teams balance task accomplishment and social interaction:

Learn to develop relationships through information and communication technologies.
Organize regular face-to-face meetings.

5) Distrust is instrumental to establishing trust among virtual team members.

This is another phenomenon that seems like a paradox because we’re new to virtual teamwork. Many times virtual team members are not very well acquainted with one another when a project starts, so there’s an initial lack of trust. On top of that, being dispersed means that trust grows more slowly than in face-to-face teams. Other research has also demonstrated that trust is built by different means in virtual teams – it is based on reliability rather than liking.

The authors of the article recommend three things to help distrust turn into trust in virtual teams:

Build trust based on culture, profession, position, and experience.
Design team activities.
Implement control mechanisms.

Conclusion

To me, paradoxes are intriguing because they represent a chance to figure something out. A paradox seems to be a contradiction, until you figure out that other piece of information that must be taken into account, and then the contradiction disappears. This represents a way of truly understanding a situation better. I guess I’m a social scientist because I love to work on these kinds of puzzles. But as the authors of this article demonstrated, and as I tried to emphasize in this post, there are everyday applications of this kind of thought exercise, too. Virtual teams exist in a very new kind of context, resulting in a number of paradoxes. If you want to learn how to better lead your virtual team, pay attention to those paradoxes. When you figure out why there is no contradiction after all, you gain valuable insight about effectively leading a virtual team.

The post Deconstructing the Paradoxes of Virtual Team Leadership appeared first on Leading Virtually.

Training to Get More From Your Virtual Team

Betsy Carroll — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:36:29 +0000

A few weeks back, Surinder posted quick tips that virtual team leaders could use to deal with pressures to make their virtual teams more productive. I believe that sponsors and leaders of virtual team projects ought to also focus on another thing: training. While the times are challenging because of pressures to cut down costs, we strongly believe that the returns on training investment will be significant — our belief is based on the ability of training to overcome the common lapses that we have observed in a large number of virtual teams.

Moreover, Benson Rosen, Stacie Furst, and Richard Blackburn suggest in a research article about whether virtual teams are receiving effective training that many team leaders and members who are experienced in a traditional context are struggling to maintain effectiveness in a virtual context. Results of a study of 440 training and development professionals reported by the authors show that virtual teams are generally not getting the right kind of training to help them work in a virtual context. A third of the respondents said their organizations provided virtual team training for members and leaders. And yet 70% of the respondents rated their organization’s training as slightly effective or not at all effective. It seems that organizations are trying to provide training to reap the benefits of virtual work, but that their efforts are not paying off. Why is that?

The remainder of this post will discuss:

Why your experience in the traditional context doesn’t work in a virtual setting,
Top training topics for leaders and team members, as recommended by the article, and
The biggest takeaway for virtual team leaders and members from this article.

Why your experience isn’t working in a virtual setting

As the article demonstrates, organizations have the knowledge and experience to train people for leadership and teamwork in a traditional context, but have yet to figure out how to adapt that to a virtual context. This is demonstrated in the list of topics that respondents to the survey said were most important – they include:

training on how to lead a virtual team meeting,
leader training on how to coach and mentor team members virtually,
training on how to monitor team progress, diagnose team problems, and take corrective actions, and
training to use communication technologies.

These top of the list items, i.e., running a meeting, coaching and mentoring, monitoring the team and taking corrective action, and communicating, are some of the most basic aspects of leadership and teamwork. The fact that respondents are calling for training in these basic areas demonstrates that they are probably quite savvy at these things in a traditional context, but struggling to master them in a virtual context. If this is hard to understand, imagine you are an expert at archaeology. What would happen if you participated in an underwater archaeology project? The basic concepts of archaeology would still apply. But how to accomplish those principles would be completely different, since the actual excavating would happen in water instead of air.

Training topics for leaders and team members

So what do the authors of the study recommend? Based on the input they got from business professionals, they created a prototype of what virtual team training should look like. Here are the key training topics.

1. For team leaders:

Choosing technology appropriate for the task at hand.
Setting expectations, measuring and rewarding team contributions in a virtual context.
Coaching and mentoring team members in a virtual context.
Modeling behaviors that are most desired and necessary in a virtual team context (responsiveness, sharing information, use of groupware technology, etc).
Managing external relations and obligations.

2. For both team leaders and members:

Face-to-face team building session before working on the project itself.
Mastering the technology that will be utilized for the project.
Communicating in a virtual context (etiquette, cultural awareness, brainstorming, and decision making are still crucial, but not exactly the same as in a traditional context).
Basic team management (logistics of a virtual meeting, defining roles, conflict resolution, meeting milestones, evaluation of team process) within a virtual team context requires special training.

The biggest takeaway

This list, based on the perspectives of hundreds of business professionals, is undoubtedly useful for setting priorities for any organization or group utilizing virtual teamwork. But the most crucial message of the study is that what you think you know about teamwork and leadership doesn’t exactly apply to virtual teamwork. The basics that need to be done – those basic principles of leadership and teamwork – still are the principles in a virtual setting. But how they are accomplished might be totally different depending on your project and the exact details of your virtual situation. This means that your instincts for leadership and teamwork, developed from experience in a traditional setting, might not serve you well in a virtual context. The message here is to embrace that you have to go back to basics and learn to do teamwork in a whole new way. This shift in mindset can mean the difference between constant struggle and real progress for your virtual team.

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